Setting Up an Accountable Care Organization

Happy Thanksgiving from Maria's List!!!



On a more serious note, the New England Journal of Medicine published this article, entitled Physicians versus Hospitals as Leaders of Accountable Care Organizations, the AMA established new principles for the development and operation of ACO's, and the American College of Physician Executives hosted this panel at it's Fall Institute last week.  Enjoy...and let me know what you think!  See you next week.

Maria's List of EHR Implementation Tips

Published online in HealthcareITnews, are Six best practices for EHR implementation.  As with most "best practices," some of them seem like common sense, which is all the more reason to list them here ...

1. Tailor your EHR to fit within staff workflows.  
2. Identify ways your new EHR could potentially fail in order to prevent problems in the future.
3. Don't rush implementation.  Take time to train.
4. In EHR implementation, practices are NOT extensions of the hospital.
5. Eliminate duplication.
6. Work with experts who have EHR implementation experience.

To read the whole article, click HERE.  

How is your EHR experience going?  Do you have any tips to share?  Click below to answer my "Got EHR survey" or post a comment below by clicking on "comments" to share your tips immediately!

Click here to take survey

The Admission Process and Problem Lists

In Sunrise Clinical Manager, the "Problem List," is called the patient's "Health Issues."  Generally, this list of "issues" is managed by the primary physician, but upon admission to the hospital, includes all the associated problems from the reason for visit, chief complaint, associated comorbidities, historical issues, and diagnoses.  It is a dynamic list that changes throughout the admission, and is considered a central tool for documentation, communication, and reporting.  Unfortunately, the work of managing a problem list can look like this on a typical admission:

To review the Allscripts presentation from the most recent Physician Advisory Council meeting, CLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDES.

Important! Time Change for Nov. 9 meeting

Good Morning fellow physicians,

As you all my remember, we have a meeting Tuesday Nov. 9th in the afternoon. Although I am not an office based physician, I do understand the difficulties of balancing one aspect of your career with other aspects of professional life. I have made a promise to all of you that my goal is to try to make your professional lives as a Dr at Mather a little easier despite all the changes. These changes may seem daunting at first but I assure you that once we all ease into it, it will work like a well oiled machine.
It is to this end that we have made the meeting a little shorter (2.5 hrs instead of 4) and from 5-7:30pm so that you can save an extra hour at the office. I hope that these little changes will help and by my having more meetings with Eclipsys, i can save everyone else a little time. Thank you all for being understanding.

Joseph Ng, MD
Chief Medical Information Officer
Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Critical Care

Mather Hospital Physician Engagement Team to Host EMR Summit

Thank you for the incredible response to my weekly newsletter/blog Maria’s List (www.checklistMD.blogspot.com).  From conversations with you and your comments on the site it has come to my attention that we are all in various stages of implementing an electronic medical record for our practices, and have a range of hopes and expectations of meeting ARRA meaningful use criteria.

I’ve approached Mather Administration with these concerns and the Voyage to Excellence Physician Engagement Team is transforming their quarterly Office Manager Luncheon into an Electronic Medical Record Summit for the whole medical staff.  We will hear a panel of our colleagues describe their experiences with EMR’s, e-prescribing, RHIO’s, and meaningful use. 

To help get an idea of the medical staff’s experience right now, please answer this brief (5 question) survey.Click here to take survey

Financial Benefits of Electronic Health Records

In a large study of over 1,300 physicians in 2009, independent physician practices using comprehensive electronic health records reported an almost $50,000 greater total revenue after operating costs per physician over physician practices using paper-based systems.  Hospital owned physician practices also demonstrated a benefit, and independent practices using a comprehensive EHR for five years reported 10% higher operating margin than physician practices in their first year of EHR use.

Interestingly, a separate study showed that 20% of surveyed providers have not looked at the issue at all.  Have you? Click here to take survey

Annual Chest CT Scans May Reduce Mortality Rate

The New York Times reports today that a massive study of current and former heavy smokers screened with annual CT scans of the chest revealed a marked decrease in mortality rate in that population.  This is the first study to show a benefit of annual screening for lung cancer which claims more lives annually than colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer combined.